Published in the Independence Daily Reporter September 27, 2017

Jim Correll, director Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College, Independence Kansas

On September 20, Tyson foods announced a “hold” on plans to build a $320M poultry processing plant in Tonganoxie, Kansas, northeast of Lawrence. Due to confidentiality agreements typical of large economic development efforts the announcement that Tyson had chosen Tonganoxie came as a huge, and for many residents, an unpleasant surprise. The decision to put the project on hold came after the Leavenworth County commission voted to reverse their support of the project.

The protests undoubtedly blind-sided the economic developers and politicians who had been working to land the deal. The training and culture of the last 60 years of economic development is to go after the companies that offer the jobs; the bigger the better, although today many economic development agencies put a lot of effort into recruiting and developing smaller businesses as well.

Based on my limited knowledge, from reporting I see by the Kansas City Star, people have two major concerns. One is the fact that Tyson has not exactly had a squeaky clean record in the past in operating their processing plants in a clean and environmentally sound way. On the one hand, Tyson officials say that all their operations are governed by state and federal regulations. On the other hand, one can find examples of millions of dollars in fines levied against the company for environmental violations of those regulations.

The other major concern is about where the 1600 employees will come from. The articles I read mention that there should be plenty of people within a 30 mile radius willing to come to the plant and work for the $13.50 – $15.50 wage range. Other areas of the articles talk about an influx of immigrants coming in to do the work. Many of the local residents are concerned about the effects of all these new people on the already-at-capacity schools and other public facilities.

Local and state politicians always speak of bringing in the “good jobs.” What does that mean? Almost everyone would agree that jobs in a big company that paid $7 per hour are not “good jobs.” Conversely, nearly everyone in our area would agree that jobs in a big company paying $25 per hour would be “good jobs.” Somewhere in between is the dividing line between “good jobs” and “not-so-good jobs.” The $13.50 to $15.50 per hour wage range is close to the federal poverty level, so I suspect the line between good and not-so-good is somewhere within that range.

If you don’t have enough people to fill the jobs, you have to wonder what contributions the influx of workers will make to our local communities whether they move in or whether the commute. Will they be able to buy and maintain housing? Will they buy things locally, strengthening our local businesses and contributing sales tax to our communities? Or, will they commute into our communities every day from outlying towns with the related wear and tear on our roads, buying everything at home?

The nature of economic development will always require confidentiality agreements so we should have conversations and debates right now about what kinds of businesses and related wage scales would be desirable in our communities. As Tyson officials and the economic developers in Leavenworth County have just learned, local citizens may no longer be willing to welcome just any business that comes along, regardless of whether big or small. For some, just getting the jobs is not enough. Citizens want to know that recruited businesses are environmentally sound and provide a wage base that will have a positive economic impact on the employees as well as the community.

Jim Correll is the director at Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349 or by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu.

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter September 20, 2017

Jim Correll, director Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College, Independence Kansas

I recently received an inquiry from a community college business coach in Oregon saying the college was working with their city to create an “innovation hub and maker space.” He said “As part of the process, we are planning to complete a feasibility analysis to provide some guidance in terms of a community needs assessment and overall planning for the project.”

He went on to ask if we had any resources he could use in these early efforts. I chuckled as I thought about the responses had we done a community needs assessment in 2012 about the need for a Fab Lab in our region. Almost no one around us had heard about Fab Labs and maker spaces. We stumbled onto the information and then found out about Fab Lab Tulsa (BTW, happy birthday to Fab Lab Tulsa; they just turned six years old.) I ended up telling the guy from Oregon that since we didn’t do any of the kind of assessment and planning he referenced in his email, that we really didn’t have any resources to help him at this part of his journey.

A small circle of us began learning about Fab Labs and maker spaces, along with 3D printing and some of the other related digital technologies. In October, 2014 Fab Lab ICC opened after just two and one-half years of this learning and informal study. Each week we are learning and affirming more about the positive psychological effects of creative work in the Fab Lab.

Today, it’s time for us to learn about another technology that although not exactly new promises to have similar effects on the physiological aspects of people’s lives. The technology, hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) has been used for a long time, starting with treatment in dive medicine for what is commonly referred to as the “bends” when divers ascend too quickly.

Although intimidating for me to write about a medical topic, the entrepreneur in me sees the potential for improving people’s lives so it’s time for us to learn about HBOT. Right now, my sole source of knowledge about HBOT is a book by a doctor who has been using HBOT for about 40 years in treating all kinds of diseases and injuries. “The Oxygen Revolution, Third Edition” by Paul G. Harch, MD and Virginia McCullough is written in a way laypeople can understand and see why HBOT is so versatile.

Many diseases and injuries have to do with low levels of blood and oxygen flow to the affected areas. The lack of blood flow and low oxygen levels cause much of the damage. The principle behind HBOT is to breathe pure oxygen while in an environment of higher than normal pressure. This combination of pressure and pure oxygen causes cells, DNA and genes to act in accelerated ways to rebuild and repair damaged cells.

For the last decade or two, HBOT has been used successfully in our area to treat wounds that are stubborn to heal. In a diabetic person, a foot wound that doesn’t heal can lead to amputation and all the related trauma, expense and debilitation that follows. Because of the essential nature of the way HBOT works at the cellular and gene level, we should be using it for other diseases. Dr. Harch, in his 40 years of treatment has seen life changing effects for individuals and families after treatments for conditions such as cerebral palsy, carbon monoxide poisoning, brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and stroke. This list is long and can be seen at Dr. Harch’s web site www.HBOT.com.

In our manner of innovation; that is, combining things to come up with something new, we have an idea and assumption we want to evaluate. Although with a limited number of individuals, we’ve seen the psychological value of veterans with PTSD working in the Fab Lab creative environment. What if we combined that with the physiological benefits of HBOT? We’d like to either work with one of the local hospitals having a hyperbaric chamber or obtain funding to build a physician assisted HBOT clinic to find out.

HBOT is not a cure-all for everything, but it’s time we explored the potential for treating more disease and injury than just wound healing.

Jim Correll is the director at Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter September 13, 2017.

Jim Correll, director Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College, Independence Kansas

In 1987, after twelve years in the professional photography business in Garden City, Kansas, I closed up shop and moved to Wichita so my spouse—different than the one I have today—could pursue a professional opportunity. The photography business had been fairly successful, except for the part when I thought I should open a camera store and do my own film and print processing. After photographing nearly 500 weddings in that time period, I decided I would focus on commercial photography in the Wichita market. That market proved to be a tough nut to crack as most advertising and industry people didn’t want to take a chance on the new, unknown guy. One person that did give me a chance was working on a business start-up that had to do with relatively new technology at the time; the fax machine.

In 1987, personal computers were just coming down in price so that small businesses were starting to use them. Anyone remember the Apple II C or E? Fax machines were not yet common in small businesses. Email if it existed, wasn’t used by small business, so fax was really the only way to send something instantly from point A to point B.

This guy’s business model seems laughable now. His idea was to have offices all over the United States, perhaps co-located in a nationwide self-serve printing chain. His business would receive faxes on behalf of any small business in the service area and then have a van driver deliver them. Yes, he was going to receive faxes and then deliver hard copies. He somehow received financial backing for this horrible idea and was in the middle of implementation when he hired me to produce a promotional photo of a delivery guy handing a fax to the customer. Apparently neither he nor his investors saw the day coming first when fax machines would be commonplace in small businesses, and today nearly extinct due to innovations in digital technology.

Although this is an extreme, funny example, it points out that there is a constant innovation threat to nearly everyone, whether in the jobs they have, the businesses they operate or the start-ups they create.

I recently saw a billboard stating that electric lineman jobs can pay up to $96,000 per year without requiring a college degree and there are openings everywhere. Since the electrification of the urban areas of the United States in the early twentieth century and the rural areas in the 1930’s and 40’s, the job of electric lineman has been a good career. This, of course, if you don’t mind working in the elements at all times, day or night, up high on a line pole or in a bucket truck with the danger of electrocution all around you. Electricity is essential so the lineman career is safe, right?

But wait; let’s look at what’s happening. Although expensive, I can now incorporate solar panels into my roof. I can go online right now and order a Tesla home backup battery, on my credit card that will run my house for a day or two without charge. At some point, maybe soon, someone will crack the code on a home fuel cell that will quietly and cleanly generate the electricity required to run our households. Between the solar panels, the home backup batteries and the fuel cells, we’ll someday see many people getting “off the electric grid.” At first, it will be a few homes here and there. Then, entire housing developments will spring u that don’t need the expensive transmission lines nor the huge electricity generating plants. Today’s great electric lineman jobs will go the way of the railroad conductor, elevator operator and telephone operator.

We won’t know exactly what will be disrupted by innovation but it will happen and nearly everyone is at risk. The best defense is to stay alert, keeping an eye open to innovations that could affect the way we make your living, whether it be job or business related. No matter what problems are solved by new innovations, there will leftover problems to solve and even new problems created by the innovations themselves. If we all develop an entrepreneurial mindset of problem solving, we’ll be better equipped to navigate through the coming disruption.

Jim Correll is the director at Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349 or by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu.

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter, September 6, 2017.

Jim Correll, director Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College, Independence Kansas

The woman comes on the screen, standing with the Statue of Liberty in the background, talking about the fact that you wrecked your car and that your insurance company is only going to pay you about three-fourths of what it’s worth. “What are you supposed to do, drive three-fourths of a car?” Of course, if you were with her insurance company, you can opt to have not only enough money to buy a car of equal value, but one with up to 15,000 fewer miles. What she doesn’t say is that the premiums for her company’s option are drastically higher than the premiums for the policy that pays three-fourths of the value.

The truth is that consumers and business owners can insure almost anything for almost any value. It’s all a matter of how much you want to pay, in the form of the premiums, to the insurance companies to assume all or part of the risk of peril. This should be a conscious, managed choice, not the outcome of a decision to find the cheapest premium possible.

We are all at risk of losing everything; property, business, health and even life. We see this all the time in different parts of the United States and around the world. Floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, fires are all a threat as are damages by war, rioting and terrorism. There are both psychological and financial implications associated with the losses we incur over a lifetime. Finally, when we’re gone, these implications are experienced by our family, our employees and in some case our customers and vendors.

Insurance companies exist so that we can elect to pay them, in the form of premiums, to assume somewhere between a very low percentage to all of the risk for us. The amount of money you pay in the form of premiums is directly proportional to the amount of risk you want to hire the insurance company to assume for you. Insurance companies are not benevolent organizations.  We should all be looking at insurance as a calculated agreement where we agree to pay the premium in exchange for the insurance company to assume part of our risk. To stay in business, the insurance companies have to estimate how much they have to charge in premiums in order to pay out the claims to satisfy their assumption of risk. Since they are not benevolent organizations, there has to be enough profit to make a reasonable return on investment for the people owning the company to think the venture to be worth their investment.

It would be unreasonable to think that anyone could stand to read through even one, let alone all, the insurance policies related to our home, business and farm. That’s where the agent comes in. It is the job of the agent to work with their clients to establish the ratio of risk assumption to be shared with the company. The agent can present the premium cost difference between insuring a house or building for replacement value or current value; a vehicle for three-fourths replacement or more than replacement value.

A good management plan would be to start today by saving a few extra dollars each month in an “insurance” savings account to use toward future deductibles and other risk losses. At some point in the future, work with your agent to gradually shift more of the risk away from the insurance company in order to lower premiums. The magic happens when you add the premium savings to your “insurance” savings account. If this process is done faithfully over several years, the “insurance” savings account will grow in value beyond what you take out to pay deductibles and losses. This is a way to pay yourself instead of the insurance company.

I’m no big fan of the big insurance companies. Ninety-two percent of them give the other eight a bad name. Instead of getting mad at the company that wants to give you three-fourths the value of the car you wrecked, find one of the many good insurance agents in our area to help you know what your coverage is and get the coverage you want.

 

Jim Correll is the director at Fab Lab ICC at Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349 or by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu.